FIGHT MILK: Dalston Victoria

FIGHT MILK: Dalston Victoria

By sheer coincidence, in the week which saw us playing Great Records From The 90s You Never Hear On The Radio Anymore, my first gig of 2018 turns out to include a band who sound like they’ve walked straight through a door from 1995. This wasn’t what I was fully expecting.

I’m not sure how I got this wrong either, but as they helter skelter into their second song, I’m already rueing the misinformation I’ve been giving out to people earlier.

(ASIDE: I arrive at the Victoria, order a drink, set off to the Gents and a hand emerges from the dim organgey light to tap me on the shoulder. Said arm, it turns out, belongs to the lovely Jamie T, who’s sat on a bar stool next to Miles Kane (the two of them have spent the day in the studio together) blissfully unaware of how much of a fan boy I am of him. I’ve always thought JT has cut a decent path through the industry; always putting music before any idea of a career as such. I like him a lot.

Anyway, we end up in a conversation about the optimum length of time it takes to make a good album (“18 months” apparently) and then I give them a rough precis of what FIGHT MILK sound like: sensitive, GSOH, a wrap-around indie embrace….which I realise now sounds like a lonely hearts ad, but that’s probably the one bit I got vaguely right).

FIGHT MILK actually sound a bit like the pop noise Sleeper would make, if you recorded them zorbing down a hill.

They are more pointedly funny, in a self-effacing way, but have some eager, unafraid-to-blush tunes, which are similar in punchy construction to Wener and co’s first album.

They are also feeling poorly: “We’re all full of cold, which is why we’re rocking so hard. Tonight you can call us The Phelgmenheads.”

It’s not all three and a half minute Britpop without a budget though. After one longer and more curious song (which may have been ‘Solving Crimes In Sweden’ if my notes are right) they reveal: “That was our Post-Rock Phase. All four minutes of it.”

Not exactly Statuesque, but they made me smile.

* FIGHT MILK’s ‘Pity Party’ EP (including the 20s crisis ‘Bank Of Mum & Dad’ and the excellent ‘NYE’) is out now on Fierce Panda